Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue

As an artist and aspiring author, I admire the world that Kristin Cashore has created. Her characters breathe on the page and face struggles of emotion and task that every normal human being can relate to on an elemental level. Having just finished reading Graceling and Bitterblue, I decided to pull out an old read (Fire) and perhaps start an interesting conversation somewhere about the series.
In the land of The Seven Kingdoms, most kings are tyrannical, petty and self-centered. Only the king of Lienid, the island kingdom in the west, and the king of Monsea, an isolated kingdom in the east, seem to rule their own kingdoms with some form of justice and sanity. Among the peoples of the seven kingdoms are special individuals, marked by brilliantly mismatched eyes, who have gifts and abilities far beyond the natural. They are called "gracelings" and while one may have only the ability to swim like a fish, another might be graced with the ability to read minds.
Katsa is a graceling and the protagonist of the story with that title. The book follows her on her journey of self-discovery and liberation as she struggles to make right the wrongs her uncle, the king Randa, has forced her to do in his name.
Katsa's story flows almost seamlessly into Bitterblue's. The daughter of former King Leck, Bitterblue is on a mission to help her kingdom, Monsea, recover from the bizarre and monstrous rule her deranged father visited on the country. As she begins to desire to meet the needs of her people, she discovers there is a conspiracy opposing those who would uncover the whole truth of the past. Struggling to balance the need to know and her own desire to heal, Bitterblue must untangle a web of deceit and lies, some leftover from her father's reign, some being woven by those who wish to forget the past ever happened.
Fire does not take place in the Seven Kingdoms, but rather in a land to the east called the Dells. There are no gracelings in the Dells, but there are monsters. Fire herself is a monster in the form of a human being. She must cover her brilliantly colored hair to protect herself from both predators and other human beings. While predators would merely attack her as choicest prey, humanity rejects her because she has a monster's supernatural ability to overpower the mind and exert her will over others. Fire is drawn into the a plot to overthrow the king of the Dells and must reconcile herself to her own nature before anyone else will be willing to accept her.
While the trilogy might seem a little disjointed at times, Cashore does finally tie all three books together with a neat and tidy theme. Her characters struggle for independence of thought and the self-confidence to make the world a better place.


For the conservative parent:
As a future protector of my own children's impressionable minds, I do have a few bones to pick with Kristin Cashore. While the books are, in the most part, harmless fantasy, there are some facets of the story that would undermine conservative values.
Katsa, though willing to love Po, refuses to marry him, instead choosing to take him as a lover. In Bitterblue, this relationship continues, and the concept of homosexuality (which was merely hinted at in Graceling) is forced into the limelight. The idea of contraception is also exceedingly present in the story, Katsa refuses to have children, Fire takes her own ability to conceive, and Bitterblue also takes herbs to prevent pregnancy. (This last issue is rather disappointing because I feel it has no bearing whatsoever on the story and could have been left out entirely.) While Cashore clearly lauds the idea of independent thinking and making up one's own mind where one might be "brainwashed." She is also blatantly placing controversial issues in a place where her readers will be influenced to accept them as normal.